Slasher movies are fun because so much of their energy involves lulling their audiences into a sense of calm and safety and then unleashing a jolt or a stinger. These jolts then alternate with the murders, and consequently the audience is kept on edge, leaping out of its seat and not knowing which comes next, a false scare or a death.
One of the most common jolts is the cat jump. This involves a hissing or meowing cat leaping suddenly into frame and startling a character, usually the final girl. Halloween II (1981) and Halloween V (1989) both feature this.
Another popular false scare involves the backwards walk or the reverse jump. In real life, you may not commonly see people going in reverse, but it's a common mode of transit in the slasher film. Characters creep backwards and then bump into somebody and scream. Usually, they're just backing into a friend and everybody laughs.
The last false scare is the practical joke, in which a not-very-nice friend pulls a nasty pran on a final girl, but it's all right in the end. Since many 1980s films chart the gulf between fact and fiction, real and fantasy, the practical joke is a crucial situation. In some cases the practical joke is also the precipitating transgression.
Source:
Horror Films of The 1980s
No comments:
Post a Comment